38 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2023
    1. April of ‘84

      Rigby's Romance evolved from the fifth chapter of the 1898 typescript version of Such is Life. In that text, the date of Tom Collins' arrival in Echuca is 9 January 1884. Although missing from TS, the date of the record is confirmed by internal evidence, such as Tom Collins’ two arrivals at Deniliquin in the closing pages; ‘2.45, p.m., on a cold winter day, nearly five months after the date of the events just recorded – or, to be precise, on the 3rd of June’ (TS 521); or ‘three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, six or eight weeks after the date of the events just recorded’ (RR 249).

  2. Nov 2021
  3. Oct 2021
    1. To Borys And All Others Who, Like Himself, Have Crossed In Early Youth The Shadow-Line Of Their Generation With Love

      Strong autobiographical connection to this epigraph.

  4. Sep 2021
    1. My head swam, there was no doubt about it, and I felt a certain heaviness of limbs as if they had grown bigger since I had sat down on that chair. I made my bow. A subtle change in Captain Ellis’ manner became perceptible as though he had laid aside the trident of deputy-Neptune. In reality, it was only his official pen that he had dropped on getting up.

      OM SA

    2. though for the looks of the thing the notification addressed to the Sailors’ Home was general.

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    3. “Yes. But you are not on the spot when you are wanted. You know you weren’t. That steward of yours wouldn’t dare to neglect a message from this office. Where the devil did you hide yourself for the best part of the day?”

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    4. Here I sit with the Consul-General’s cable before me, and the only man fit for the job not to be found anywhere. I began to think you were funking it, too. . . .” “I haven’t been long getting to the office,” I remarked calmly.

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    5. Our deputy-Neptune had no beard on his chin, and there was no trident to be seen standing in a corner anywhere, like an umbrella. But his hand was holding a pen--the official pen, far mightier than the sword in making or marring the fortune of simple toiling men. He was looking over his shoulder at my advance.

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    6. with a mincing gait around the whole system of desks

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    7. But the head Shipping-Master hopped down from his elevation and hurried along on the thick mats to meet me in the broad central passage. He had a Scottish name, but his complexion was of a rich olive hue, his short beard was jet black, and his eyes, also black, had a languishing expression. He asked confidentially:“You want to see Him?” All lightness of spirit and body having departed from me at the touch of officialdom, I looked at the scribe without animation and asked in my turn wearily: “What do you think? Is it any use?” “My goodness! He has asked for you twice today.” This emphatic He was the supreme authority, the Marine Superintendent, the Harbour-Master--a very great person in the eyes of every single quill-driver in the room. But that was nothing to the opinion he had of his own greatness. Captain Ellis looked upon himself as a sort of divine (pagan) emanation, the deputy-Neptune for the circumambient seas. If he did not actually rule the waves, he pretended to rule the fate of the mortals whose lives were cast upon the waters. This uplifting illusion made him inquisitorial and peremptory. And as his temperament was choleric there were fellows who were actually afraid of him. He was redoubtable, not in virtue of his office, but because of his unwarrantable assumptions. I had never had anything to do with him before. I said: “Oh! He has asked for me twice. Then perhaps I had better go in.” “You must! You must!”

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    8. All this seemed to glide toward me swiftly. The whole great roadstead to the right was just a mere flicker of blue, and the dim cool hall swallowed me up out of the heat and glare of which I had not been aware till the very moment I passed in from it. The broad inner staircase insinuated itself under my feet somehow. Command is a strong magic. The first human beings I perceived distinctly since I had parted with the indignant back of Captain Giles were the crew of the harbour steam-launch lounging on the spacious landing about the curtained archway of the shipping office.

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    9. “The trouble!” I murmured, uncomprehending. What trouble? All I could remember was being mystified and bored by his conversation for a solid hour after tiffin. And he called that taking a lot of trouble. He was looking at me with a self-complacency which would have been odious in any other man. All at once, as if a page of a book had been turned over disclosing a word which made plain all that had gone before, I perceived that this matter had also another than an ethical aspect. And still I did not move. Captain Giles lost his patience a little. With an angry puff at his pipe he turned his back on my hesitation. But it was not hesitation on my part. I had been, if I may express myself so, put out of gear mentally.

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    10. Strictly speaking, he was right. But I’ve never had much taste for investigation, for showing people up and all that no doubt ethically meritorious kind of work. And my view of the episode was purely ethical. If any one had to be the death of the Steward I didn’t see why it shouldn’t be Captain Giles himself, a man of age and standing, and a permanent resident. Whereas, I in comparison, felt myself a mere bird of passage in that port. In fact, it might have been said that I had already broken off my connection. I muttered that I didn’t think--it was nothing to me. . . . “Nothing!” repeated Captain Giles, giving some signs of quiet,deliberate indignation.

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    11. The Steward screamed out in accents of loud despair: “You will be the death of me!” The mighty slap he gave his wretched forehead was very loud, too. But when I turned to look at him he was no longer there. He had rushed away somewhere out of sight. This sudden disappearance made me laugh.

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    12. At this point he stopped with a profound look. The letter, he continued, was addressed to the Chief Steward. Now what could Captain Ellis, the Master Attendant, want to write to the Steward for? The fellow went every morning, anyhow, to the Harbour Office with his report, for orders or what not. He hadn’t been back more than an hour before there was an office peon chasing him with a note. Now what was that for? And he began to speculate. It was not for this--and it could not be for that. As to that other thing it was unthinkable. The fatuousness of all this made me stare. If the man had not been somehow a sympathetic personality I would have resented it like an insult. As it was, I felt only sorry for him. Something remarkably earnest in his gaze prevented me from laughing in his face. Neither did I yawn at him. I just stared. His tone became a shade more mysterious. Directly the fellow (meaning the Steward) got that note he rushed for his hat and bolted out of the house. But it wasn’t because the note called him to the Harbour Office. He didn’t go there. He was not absent long enough for that. He came darting back in no time, flung his hat away, and raced about the dining room moaning and slapping his forehead. All these exciting facts and manifestations had been observed by Captain Giles. He had, it seems, been meditating upon them ever since. I began to pity him profoundly. And in a tone which I tried to make as little sarcastic as possible I said that I was glad he had found something to occupy his morning hours.With his disarming simplicity he made me observe, as if it were a matter of some consequence, how strange it was that he should have spent the morning indoors at all. He generally was out before tiffin, visiting various offices, seeing his friends in the harbour, and so on. He had felt out of sorts somewhat on rising. Nothing much. Just enough to make him feel lazy. All this with a sustained, holding stare which, in conjunction with the general inanity of the discourse, conveyed the impression of mild, dreary lunacy. And when he hitched his chair a little and dropped his voice to the low note of mystery, it flashed upon me that high professional reputation was not necessarily a guarantee of sound mind. It never occurred to me then that I didn’t know in what soundness of mind exactly consisted and what a delicate and, upon the whole, unimportant matter it was. With some idea of not hurting his feelings I blinked at him in an interested manner. But when he proceeded to ask me mysteriously whether I remembered what had passed just now between that Steward of ours and “that man Hamilton,” I only grunted sourly assent and turned away my head. “Aye. But do you remember every word?” he insisted tactfully. “I don’t know. It’s none of my business,” I snapped out, consigning, moreover, the Steward and Hamilton aloud to eternal perdition. I meant to be very energetic and final, but Captain Giles continued to gaze at me thoughtfully. Nothing could stop him. He went on to point out that my personality was involved in that conversation. When I tried to preserve the semblance of unconcern he became positively cruel. I heard what the man had said? Yes? What did I think of it then?--he wanted to know. Captain Giles’ appearance excluding the suspicion of mere sly malice, I came to the conclusion that he was simply the most tactless idiot on earth. I almost despised myself for the weakness of attempting to enlighten his common understanding. I started to explain that I did not think anything whatever. Hamilton was not worth a thought. What such an offensive loafer . . . “Aye! that he is,” interjected Captain Giles . . . thought or said was below any decent man’s contempt, and I did not propose to take the slightest notice of it. This attitude seemed to me so simple and obvious that I was really astonished at Giles giving no sign of assent. Such perfect stupidity was almost interesting. “What would you like me to do?” I asked, laughing. “I can’t start a row with him because of the opinion he has formed of me. Of course, I’ve heard of the contemptuous way he alludes to me. But he doesn’t intrudehis contempt on my notice. He has never expressed it in my hearing. For even just now he didn’t know we could hear him. I should only make myself ridiculous.” That hopeless Giles went on puffing at his pipe moodily. All at once his face cleared, and he spoke. “You missed my point.” “Have I? I am very glad to hear it,” I said. With increasing animation he stated again that I had missed his point. Entirely. And in a tone of growing self-conscious complacency he told me that few things escaped his attention, and he was rather used to think them out, and generally from his experience of life and men arrived at the right conclusion. This bit of self-praise, of course, fitted excellently the laborious inanity of the whole conversation. The whole thing strengthened in me that obscure feeling of life being but a waste of days, which, half-unconsciously, had driven me out of a comfortable berth, away from men I liked, to flee from the menace of emptiness . . . and to find inanity at the first turn. Here was a man of recognized character and achievement disclosed as an absurd and dreary chatterer. And it was probably like this everywhere--from east to west, from the bottom to the top of the social scale. A great discouragement fell on me. A spiritual drowsiness. Giles’ voice was going on complacently; the very voice of the universal hollow conceit. And I was no longer angry with it. There was nothing original, nothing new, startling, informing, to expect from the world; no opportunities to find out something about oneself, no wisdom to acquire, no fun to enjoy. Everything was stupid and overrated, even as Captain Giles was. So be it. The name of Hamilton suddenly caught my ear and roused me up. “I thought we had done with him,” I said, with the greatest possible distaste. “Yes. But considering what we happened to hear just now I think you ought to do it.” “Ought to do it?” I sat up bewildered. “Do what?” Captain Giles confronted me very much surprised. “Why! Do what I have been advising you to try. You go and ask the Steward what was there in that letter from the Harbour Office. Ask him straight out.”I remained speechless for a time. Here was something unexpected and original enough to be altogether incomprehensible. I murmured, astounded: “But I thought it was Hamilton that you . . .” “Exactly. Don’t you let him. You do what I tell you. You tackle that Steward. You’ll make him jump, I bet,” insisted Captain Giles, waving his smouldering pipe impressively at me. Then he took three rapid puffs at it. His aspect of triumphant acuteness was indescribable. Yet the man remained a strangely sympathetic creature. Benevolence radiated from him ridiculously, mildly, impressively. It was irritating, too. But I pointed out coldly, as one who deals with the incomprehensible, that I didn’t see any reason to expose myself to a snub from the fellow. He was a very unsatisfactory steward and a miserable wretch besides, but I would just as soon think of tweaking his nose. “Tweaking his nose,” said Captain Giles in a scandalized tone. “Much use it would be to you.” That remark was so irrelevant that one could make no answer to it. But the sense of the absurdity was beginning at last to exercise its well-known fascination. I felt I must not let the man talk to me any more. I got up, observing curtly that he was too much for me--that I couldn’t make him out. Before I had time to move away he spoke again in a changed tone of obstinacy and puffing nervously at his pipe. “Well--he’s a--no account cuss--anyhow. You just--ask him. That’s all.” That new manner impressed me--or rather made me pause. But sanity asserting its sway at once I left the verandah after giving him a mirthless smile. In a few strides I found myself in the dining room, now cleared and empty. But during that short time various thoughts occurred to me, such as: that Giles had been making fun of me, expecting some amusement at my expense; that I probably looked silly and gullible; that I knew very little of life. . . . The door facing me across the dining room flew open to my extreme surprise. It was the door inscribed with the word “Steward” and the man himself ran out of his stuffy, Philistinish lair in his absurd, hunted-animal manner, making for the garden door. To this day I don’t know what made me call after him. “I say! Wait a minute.” Perhaps it was the sidelong glance he gave me; or possibly I was yet under the influence of Captain Giles’ mysterious earnestness.Well, it was an impulse of some sort; an effect of that force somewhere within our lives which shapes them this way or that. For if these words had not escaped from my lips (my will had nothing to do with that) my existence would, to be sure, have been still a seaman’s existence, but directed on now to me utterly inconceivable lines. No. My will had nothing to do with it. Indeed, no sooner had I made that fateful noise than I became extremely sorry for it. Had the man stopped and faced me I would have had to retire in disorder. For I had no notion to carry out Captain Giles’ idiotic joke, either at my own expense or at the expense of the Steward. But here the old human instinct of the chase came into play. He pretended to be deaf, and I, without thinking a second about it, dashed along my own side of the dining table and cut him off at the very door. “Why can’t you answer when you are spoken to?” I asked roughly. He leaned against the lintel of the door. He looked extremely wretched. Human nature is, I fear, not very nice right through. There are ugly spots in it. I found myself growing angry, and that, I believe, only because my quarry looked so woe-begone. Miserable beggar! I went for him without more ado. “I understand there was an official communication to the Home from the Harbour Office this morning. Is that so?” Instead of telling me to mind my own business, as he might have done, he began to whine with an undertone of impudence. He couldn’t see me anywhere this morning. He couldn’t be expected to run all over the town after me. “Who wants you to?” I cried. And then my eyes became opened to the inwardness of things and speeches the triviality of which had been so baffling and tiresome. I told him I wanted to know what was in that letter. My sternness of tone and behaviour was only half assumed. Curiosity can be a very fierce sentiment--at times. He took refuge in a silly, muttering sulkiness. It was nothing to me, he mumbled. I had told him I was going home. And since I was going home he didn’t see why he should. . . . That was the line of his argument, and it was irrelevant enough to be almost insulting. Insulting to one’s intelligence, I mean. In that twilight region between youth and maturity, in which I had my being then, one is peculiarly sensitive to that kind of insult. I am afraid my behaviour to the Steward became very rough indeed. But itwasn’t in him to face out anything or anybody. Drug habit or solitary tippling, perhaps. And when I forgot myself so far as to swear at him he broke down and began to shriek. I don’t mean to say that he made a great outcry. It was a cynical shrieking confession, only faint--piteously faint. It wasn’t very coherent either, but sufficiently so to strike me dumb at first. I turned my eyes from him in righteous indignation, and perceived Captain Giles in the verandah doorway surveying quietly the scene, his own handiwork, if I may express it in that way. His smouldering black pipe was very noticeable in his big, paternal fist. So, too, was the glitter of his heavy gold watch-chain across the breast of his white tunic. He exhaled an atmosphere of virtuous sagacity serene enough for any innocent soul to fly to confidently. I flew to him.

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    13. I had never in my life felt more detached from all earthly goings on. Freed from the sea for a time, I preserved the sailor’s consciousness of complete independence from all land affairs. How could they concern me? I gazed at Captain Giles’ animation with scorn rather than with curiosity. To his obviously preparatory question whether our Steward had spoken to me that day I said he hadn’t. And what’s more he would have had precious little encouragement if he had tried to. I didn’t want the fellow to speak to me at all.

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    14. And I was about to turn away, withdrawing my privacy from his fatuous, objectless attempts to test what sort of stuff it was made of, when he laid down his pipe in an extremely significant manner, you know, as if a critical moment had come, and leaned sideways over the table between us.

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    15. I had created for myself by leaving suddenly my very satisfactory employment. And I was not very pleased with it. I had it on the tip of my tongue to say that common sense had nothing to do with my action, and that therefore it didn’t deserve the interest Captain Giles seemed to be taking in it. But he was puffing at a short wooden pipe now, and looked so guileless, dense, and commonplace, that it seemed hardly worth while to puzzle him either with truth or sarcasm. He blew a cloud of smoke, then surprised me by a very abrupt: “Paid your passage money yet?”

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    16. I don’t know what more I would have said, but the much-belated Hamilton came in just then and took his usual seat. So I dropped into a mumble. “Anyhow, you shall see it done this time.” Hamilton, beautifully shaved, gave Captain Giles a curt nod, but didn’t even condescend to raise his eyebrows at me; and when he spoke it was only to tell the Chief Steward that the food on his plate wasn’t fit to be set before a gentleman. The individual addressed seemed much too unhappy to groan. He cast his eyes up to the punkah and that was all. Captain Giles and I got up from the table, and the stranger next to Hamilton followed our example, manoeuvring himself to his feet with difficulty. He, poor fellow, not because he was hungry but I verily believe only to recover his self-respect, had tried to put some of that unworthy food into his mouth. But after dropping his fork twice and generally making a failure of it, he had sat still with an air of intense mortification combined with a ghastly glazed stare. Both Giles and I had avoided looking his way at table. On the verandah he stopped short on purpose to address to us anxiously a long remark which I failed to understand completely. It sounded like some horrible unknown language. But when Captain Giles, after only an instant for reflection, assured him with homely friendliness, “Aye, to be sure. You are right there,” he appeared very much gratified indeed, and went away (pretty straight, too) to seek a distant long chair. “What was he trying to say?” I asked with disgust. “I don’t know. Mustn’t be down too much on a fellow. He’s feeling pretty wretched, you may be sure; and to-morrow he’ll feel worse yet.”Judging by the man’s appearance it seemed impossible. I wondered what sort of complicated debauch had reduced him to that unspeakable condition. Captain Giles’ benevolence was spoiled by a curious air of complacency which I disliked. I said with a little laugh: “Well, he will have you to look after him.” He made a deprecatory gesture, sat down, and took up a paper. I did the same. The papers were old and uninteresting, filled up mostly with dreary stereotyped descriptions of Queen Victoria’s first jubilee celebrations. Probably we should have quickly fallen into a tropical afternoon doze if it had not been for Hamilton’s voice raised in the dining room. He was finishing his tiffin there. The big double doors stood wide open permanently, and he could not have had any idea how near to the doorway our chairs were placed. He was heard in a loud, supercilious tone answering some statement ventured by the Chief Steward. “I am not going to be rushed into anything. They will be glad enough to get a gentleman I imagine. There is no hurry.” A loud whispering from the Steward succeeded and then again Hamilton was heard with even intenser scorn. “What? That young ass who fancies himself for having been chief mate with Kent so long? . . . Preposterous.” Giles and I looked at each other. Kent being the name of my late commander, Captain Giles’ whisper, “He’s talking of you,” seemed to me sheer waste of breath. The Chief Steward must have stuck to his point, whatever it was, because Hamilton was heard again more supercilious if possible, and also very emphatic: “Rubbish, my good man! One doesn’t _compete_ with a rank outsider like that. There’s plenty of time.” Then there were pushing of chairs, footsteps in the next room, and plaintive expostulations from the Steward, who was pursuing Hamilton, even out of doors through the main entrance. “That’s a very insulting sort of man,” remarked Captain Giles--superfluously, I thought. “Very insulting. You haven’t offended him in some way, have you?” “Never spoke to him in my life,” I said grumpily. “Can’t imagine what he means by competing. He has been trying for my job after I left--and didn’t get it. But that isn’t exactly competition.” Captain Giles balanced his big benevolent head thoughtfully. “He didn’t get it,” he repeated very slowly. “No, not likely either, with Kent. Kent is no end sorry you left him. He gives you the name of a good seaman, too.”I flung away the paper I was still holding. I sat up, I slapped the table with my open palm. I wanted to know why he would keep harping on that, my absolutely private affair. It was exasperating, really.

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    17. You would not have been surprised to learn that he was an architect. To me (I know how absurd it is) to me he looked like a churchwarden. He had the appearance of a man from whom you would expect sound advice, moral sentiments, with perhaps a platitude or two thrown in on occasion, not from a desire to dazzle, but from honest conviction. Though very well known and appreciated in the shipping world, he had no regular employment. He did not want it.

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    18. We were four around the cloth. The dozing stranger from the chair was one. Both his eyes were partly opened now, but they did not seem to see anything. He was supine. The dignified person next him, with short side whiskers and a carefully scraped chin, was, of course, Hamilton. I have never seen any one so full of dignity for the station in life Providence had been pleased to place him in. I had been told that he regarded me as a rank outsider. He raised not only his eyes, but his eyebrows as well, at the sound I made pulling back my chair.

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    19. He was an unhappy, wizenedlittle man, who if put into a jockey’s rig would have looked the part to perfection.

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    20. I walked in the sunshine, disregarding it, and in the shade of the big trees on the esplanade without enjoying it. The heat of the tropical East descended through the leafy boughs, enveloping my thinly-clad body, clinging to my rebellious discontent, as if to rob it of its freedom

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    21. It was a lofty, big, cool, white room, where the screened light of day glowed serenely. Everybody in it--the officials, the public--were in white. Only the heavy polished desks gleamed darkly in a central avenue, and some papers lying on them were blue. Enormous punkahs sent from on high a gentle draught through that immaculate interior and upon our perspiring heads. The official behind the desk we approached grinned amiably and kept it up till, in answer to his perfunctory question, “Sign off and on again?” my Captain answered, “No! Signing off for good.” And then his grin vanished in sudden solemnity. He did not look at me again till he handed me my papers with a sorrowful expression, as if they had been my passports for Hades. While I was putting them away he murmured some question to the Captain, and I heard the latter answer good-humouredly: “No. He leaves us to go home.” “Oh!” the other exclaimed, nodding mournfully over my sad condition. I didn’t know him outside the official building, but he leaned forward the desk to shake hands with me, compassionately, as one would with some poor devil going out to be hanged; and I am afraid I performed my part ungraciously, in the hardened manner of an impenitent criminal. No homeward-bound mail-boat was due for three or four days.

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    22. But the second engineer attacked me differently. He was a sturdy young Scot, with a smooth face and light eyes. His honest red countenance emerged out of the engine-room companion and then the whole robust man, with shirt sleeves turned up, wiping slowly the massive fore-arms with a lump of cotton-waste. And his light eyes expressed bitter distaste, as though our friendship had turned to ashes. He said weightily: “Oh! Aye! I’ve been thinking it was about time for you to run away home and get married to some silly girl.” It was tacitly understood in the port that John Nieven was a fierce misogynist; and the absurd character of the sally convinced me that he meant to be nasty--very nasty--had meant to say the most crushing thing he could think of. My laugh sounded deprecatory. Nobody but a friend could be so angry as that.

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    23. Presently a smile came to lurk under his thick iron-gray moustache, and he observed that, of course, if I felt I must go he couldn’t keep me by main force. And it was arranged that I should be paid off the next morning. As I was going out of his cabin he added suddenly, in a peculiar wistful tone, that he hoped I would find what I was so anxious to go and look for. A soft, cryptic utterance which seemed to reach deeper than any diamond-hard tool could have done.

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    24. We were only four white men on board, with a large crew of Kalashes and two Malay petty officers. The Captain stared hard as if wondering what ailed me.

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    25. As to the kind of trade she was engaged in and the character of my shipmates, I could not have been happier if I had had the life and the men made to my order by a benevolent Enchanter.

      OM SA

  5. Aug 2021
    1. Possibly in the comprehensive capacity of a failure. I should have thought his employment a very easy one, but he used to affirm for some reason or other that his job would be the death of him some day. It was rather mysterious. Perhaps everything naturally was too much trouble for him. He certainly seemed to hate having people in the house. On entering it I thought he must be feeling pleased. It was as still as a tomb. I could see no one in the living rooms; and the verandah, too, was empty, except for a man at the far end dozing prone in a long chair. At the noise of my footsteps he opened one horribly fish-like eye. He was a stranger to me. I retreated from there, and crossing the dining room--a very bare apartment with a motionless punkah hanging over the centre table--I knocked at a door labelled in black letters: “Chief Steward.” The answer to my knock being a vexed and doleful plaint: “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What is it now?” I went in at once. It was a strange room to find in the tropics. Twilight and stuffiness reigned in there. The fellow had hung enormously ample, dusty, cheap lace curtains over his windows, which were shut. Piles of cardboard boxes, such as milliners and dressmakers use in Europe, cumbered the corners; and by some means he had procured for himself the sort of furniture that might have come out of a respectable parlour in the East End of London--a horsehair sofa, arm-chairs of the same. I glimpsed grimy antimacassars scattered over that horrid upholstery, which was awe-inspiring, insomuch that one could not guess what mysterious accident, need, or fancy had collected it there. Its owner had taken off his tunic, and in white trousers and a thin, short-sleeved singlet prowled behind the chair-backs nursing his meagre elbows. An exclamation of dismay escaped him when he heard that I had come for a stay; but he could not deny that there were plenty of vacant rooms. “Very well. Can you give me the one I had before?” He emitted a faint moan from behind a pile of cardboard boxes on the table, which might have contained gloves or handkerchiefs or neckties. I wonder what the fellow did keep in them? There was a smell of decaying coral, or Oriental dust of zoological speciments in that den of his. I could only see the top of his head and his unhappy eyes levelled at me over the barrier. “It’s only for a couple of days,” I said, intending to cheer him up.“Perhaps you would like to pay in advance?” he suggested eagerly. “Certainly not!” I burst out directly I could speak. “Never heard of such a thing! This is the most infernal cheek. . . .” He had seized his head in both hands--a gesture of despair which checked my indignation. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Don’t fly out like this. I am asking everybody.” “I don’t believe it,” I said bluntly. “Well, I am going to. And if you gentlemen all agreed to pay in advance I could make Hamilton pay up, too. He’s always turning up ashore dead broke, and even when he has some money he won’t settle his bills. I don’t know what to do with him. He swears at me and tells me I can’t chuck a white man out into the street here. So if you only would. . . .” I was amazed. Incredulous, too. I suspected the fellow of gratuitous impertinence. I told him with marked emphasis that I would see him and Hamilton hanged first, and requested him to conduct me to my room with no more of his nonsense. He produced then a key from somewhere and led the way out of his lair, giving me a vicious sidelong look in passing. “Any one I know staying here?” I asked him before he left my room. He had recovered his usual pained impatient tone, and said that Captain Giles was there, back from a Solo Sea trip. Two other guests were staying also. He paused. And, of course, Hamilton, he added. “Oh, yes! Hamilton,” I said, and the miserable creature took himself off with a final groan. His impudence still rankled when I came into the dining room at tiffin time. He was there on duty overlooking the Chinamen servants. The tiffin was laid on one end only of the long table, and the punkah was stirring the hot air lazily--mostly above a barren waste of polished wood.

      OM SA

    2. What moments? Why,

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  6. Apr 2017
    1. SEVEN EMUS

      'Seven Emus' was revised and expanded for the book version published in 1959. Herbert also incorporated an idiosyncratic syntax that perplexed many readers.

  7. Nov 2016
  8. Oct 2016
    1. April of ‘84

      Rigby's Romance evolved from the fifth chapter of the 1898 typescript version of Such is Life. In that text, the date of Tom Collins' arrival in Echuca is 9 January 1884. Although missing from TS, the date of the record is confirmed by internal evidence, such as Tom Collins’ two arrivals at Deniliquin in the closing pages; ‘2.45, p.m., on a cold winter day, nearly five months after the date of the events just recorded – or, to be precise, on the 3rd of June’ (TS 521); or ‘three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, six or eight weeks after the date of the events just recorded’ (RR 249).

    2. Yarrawonga

      Situated in the Victorian Shire of Moira, Yarrawonga is 133 km upriver from Echuca.

    3. kangaroo dog

      With his insatiable appetite and his owner's vigilant protection and affection, Tom Collins' kangaroo dog, Pup, is a significant presence in both Rigby's Romance and Such is Life. Bred from greyhound and deerhound stock, kangaroo dogs were used primarily as a hunting dog and adapted well to Australian conditions. Kangaroo dog owned by Mr Dunn of Castlereagh Street, Sydney, 1853 / painted by Thomas Tyrwhitt Balcombe (State Library of New South Wales)

    4. Echuca

      Echuca is located in the Victorian Shire of Campapse on the southern bank of the Murray River.

    5. Rev. George Crabbe.

      From "The Mother" by George Crabbe (1754-1832). First published as Tale VIII in Tales in Verse (1812).